Selling a Home

Selling your home is rarely easy, even when it’s the right decision. There are so many ways to arrive at being a seller: facing the need to upsize or downsize as your household changes, wanting to expand or simplify your lifestyle, or simply being ready for your next phase – wherever that may be.

You may be looking forward to moving to a new neighborhood, or facing the uncertainty of a major move across country; you may be reluctant to leave memories behind, or eager to embark on new adventures. Whatever your situation, the brokers at Better Properties Kitsap are here to help you with every step of the process.

We know that selling your home can seem like a daunting task, so we’ve compiled some useful information for sellers looking to start off on the right foot. When you’re ready to take the next steps, please don’t hesitate to reach out by phone or email.

The Typical Buying Process

Although every home selling process is unique, the majority of them follow these steps:

Setting the Listing Price

When setting the list price for your home, you should be aware of a buyer’s frame of mind. Buyers will determine which houses they want to view based on a list of houses for sale in your neighborhood, which they may receive from their real estate agent, or compile themselves from online information.

Consider the following factors when setting your home’s price:

• If you set the price too high, your house won’t be picked for viewing (even if it’s much nicer than others in the area). You may have told your REALTOR® to "Bring me any offer. Frankly, I’d take less." Setting the price too high means fewer people will choose to view your house because they will consider it “out of their price range.”
• If you set the price too low, you'll short-change yourself. Your house will sell promptly, but it will most likely sell before it has time to find the buyer who would have paid its full worth.

Pro tip: never use the term "asking price” – it implies that you don't expect to receive that amount.

To determine the proper list price, a real estate professional can provide you with the following services:

• Furnishing comparable sales
• Analyzing market conditions
• Helping to determine offering incentives
• Estimating your net proceeds

The brokers at Better Properties Kitsap are fully qualified to help you determine the optimal price for your home – neither priced out of your buyers’ range, nor selling yourself short.

Using Comparable Sales

No matter how attractive and polished your house may be, buyers will be comparing its price against other homes on the market. Your best guide is a record of what the buying public has been willing to pay in the past few months for property in your neighborhood like yours, also known as comparable sales (“comps”). Better Properties Kitsap can furnish data on sale figures for those comps and analyze them to identify a suggested listing price for your home. The final decision about how much to ask for, though, is always yours.

The list of comparable sales we bring to you, along with data about other houses presently on the market in your neighborhood, is used for a Comparative Market Analysis (CMA). To help you determine a reasonable sale price for your house, the analysis will also include data on nearby houses that failed to sell in the past few months, along with their list prices.

This CMA differs from a formal appraisal in some important ways. One major difference is that an appraisal will be based only on past sales, where a CMA may include properties currently listed and those currently pending sale. Additionally, an appraisal is done for a fee while the CMA is a service provided by Better Properties when you engage one of our brokers as your selling agent.

A CMA is enough to let you set a selling price if your circumstances are fairly ordinary. A formal written appraisal – which may cost a few hundred dollars when performed by a professional inspector – can be useful in certain circumstances, including:

• You have a unique property
• There hasn't been much real estate activity in your area recently
• Co-owners disagree about price of the property